Judge Allows Widow to Continue Lawsuit

Published 7:00 pm, Monday, January 13, 2003

The widow of a slain police officer can continue her wrongful death lawsuit against a man acquitted of the killing, a judge has ruled.

The ruling Monday was the second time Robert Zarinsky had sought to have Elizabeth Bernoskie's lawsuit dismissed. Bernoskie's husband, Charles, was fatally shot during a botched robbery at a Rahway car dealership in 1958.

Criminal charges in the case came in 1999 when Zarinsky's sister, Judith Sapsa, implicated her brother and a cousin. Zarinsky was acquitted in May 2001 of murder charges. The cousin, Theodore Schiffer of Peckville, Pa., who pleaded guilty to murder and testified against Zarinsky, is also named as a defendant in the suit.

In October 2001, the state Supreme Court refused to hear Zarinsky's claim the two-year time limit for bringing the suit had passed. Lower courts had rejected the argument because Bernoskie, through no fault of her own, did not know whom to sue for some 40 years.

Zarinsky, 62, filed another motion last year to dismiss the suit, claiming he could not get a fair trial because of the passage of time, the death of witnesses and the loss of evidence. Superior Court Judge Edward W. Beglin Jr. rejected those arguments in his ruling Monday.

Zarinsky has been in prison since 1975 for the 1969 murder of a Monmouth County teenager.